


And If You Don't Give Up, and Don't Give In

by MissIzzy



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Parent Death, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-28 04:31:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17175944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissIzzy/pseuds/MissIzzy
Summary: Back home after her father's funeral.





	And If You Don't Give Up, and Don't Give In

They’d ended up falling asleep on the couch after the long drive home, and when they woke up, it was early evening. It was the first time in days Karen didn’t feel tired. But she did feel mildly nauseous, even before Matt murmured, “Your stomach’s too empty. We’ve got to have something in here you can get down.”

Of course they did. From the moment he had pressed his ear to her abdomen and said he thought he heard something, Matt had been as zealous in helping Karen get through her pregnancy as he’d been in every other task he got invested in. He’d spent an entire day researching every little thing her body might do during it, then had bought any food he thought she might find easy to eat or could be used to satisfy any craving she might have, and even grouped them by what nutrients they provided.

Naturally, Foggy and his mother had known very quickly, but they’d decided to wait until she could take a proper test before telling anyone else. They’d had everything confirmed four days before her father’s death. During which they hadn’t gotten around to telling anyone, and after that, Karen hadn’t wanted to.

He got her a glass of water, and the nausea passed as she leaned against the fridge and drank it slowly, swallow by swallow. Matt was rummaging about the cupboards, feeling around in them for the braille labels on everything, and suddenly Karen was back in her family’s kitchen, eight years old, drinking another glass of water, while her dad rummaged about the cupboards, her mom calling from the living room what he should grab.

Maybe it was the hormones kicking in that caused her to just burst into tears. She wasn’t sure.

Instantly Matt was gathering her into his arms and tucking her against his chest. He didn’t speak initially, as she cried for another minute or so. At some point he reached inside the fridge, and held a piece of cheese near her until she could final take hold of it.

When she’d finished it, he said softly, “Is it still too soon to say he didn’t deserve to know?”

Anyone else and it probably would have been. But Matt had bristled throughout their entire stay in Vermont, and Karen was pretty sure he’d been forcing himself not to say this, among a few other things, the entire time. She wasn’t up to responding either way.

Until Matt continued, “You can’t tell me you weren’t dreading trying to tell him. Who knows how he would’ve reacted. What if he’d gone telling you how you were going to be a terrible mother and he felt sorry for the baby, maybe even tried to convince you that you weren’t fit to parent his grandchild-never mind that he forfeited the right to call your children his grandchildren the day he threw you out…”

“He wasn’t aggressive about it like that,” Karen forced herself to say. “He probably would’ve just said something noncommittal and then found an excuse to hang up, like he did when I told him we were getting married.” Although his just not wanting to deal with her had always hurt more than his disparaging remarks had. It that she had indeed been dreading, which was the main reason she hadn’t made the call. Matt and Foggy had both even said to her she didn’t really have to, and she had wished she could agree with them.

She’d already resigned herself to Matt going out after dinner. He’d made the city do without him for days, after all. There were discussions and probably even fights ahead about how he was going to balance being a vigilante and being a father, but not yet, not now. Besides, she’d wanted to be alone for unpacking the cases they’d taken back with them.

It was mostly her mother’s things, ones her family’s remaining friends had said she would’ve wanted Karen to have, even now. She started by carefully taking out her best dress, the one that mostly fitted her now, to hang up in their closet. It was swiftly followed by her winter coat, which would be far more useful to her daughter. Her copy of the Bible came next, the one Karen could remember her reading from to her friends Friday night, usually insisting Karen sit with them-how she’d hated those nights then. King James version; her mom had been old-fashioned like that. Her collection of postcards of all the places she’d wanted to go to was hard for her daughter to look at.

There was also the collection of her and Kevin’s baby things. The blankets they’d both slept in, the little pink and blue outfits they’d each worn, even some of their old toys. Karen had no doubt her mom had always wanted her grandchildren to have those.

She did have to wonder what she would’ve thought of her son-in-law. She’d been wary of Catholics, and even more so of lawyers. Her dad had been too, a little, and he might not have always behaved well about the blindness. But none of that mattered now, she supposed.

Only a handful of things she drew out had belonged to her father. Matt had very much wanted nothing of his. She’d taken a couple of his old tools, the ones too useful to throw out. Also a pair of boots that looked like he’d never worn them; she’d donate those, probably to the center Colleen Wing worked at.

The main thing of his they had were his papers. He still had them in the box her mother had painted over with flowers when she’d been eighteen and had dreamed of being an artist. One of his friends had gone through it already, before their arrival, but he’d mainly just looked for a will, and to see if selling the property would cover his debts. (The answer would likely be yes, though not by much.) When Karen sat down on the bed, and opened it, several pieces of paper popped out; it was so jam-packed.

One of them was her father’s death certificate; his friend had put it there. There were two more of those she wasn’t looking forward to seeing. She put it in a pile with the other most recent paperwork. As she found things related to the diner and the household taxes, some of them two decades old, she put them in a pile too; she’d want to consult with Matt and Foggy about how much of that they really wanted to keep.

There were papers related to her and Kevin, too. At least she’d finally gotten her birth certificate back. She didn’t cry when she looked at his, but it was a close thing.

Halfway down, she found several papers jammed into each other, including what looked like insurance stuff for the car he apparently hadn’t owned for nearly two years prior to his death. There was also what looked like a computer printout, folded up so she couldn’t see what was on it. She yanked hard on the former, and accidentally flipped the latter out and up into the air, along with a smaller piece of paper.

She gasped when she saw what was on that last item. It was the wedding photo she’d emailed him.

With one trembling hand she picked it up, and with the other, she unfolded the bigger piece of paper. It was from the  _Bulletin_ ’s website, her article about the Watchdog attacks and blackouts. She hadn’t even been sure if he’d paid attention to which paper she’d worked for.

There weren’t that many creases in them. She couldn’t be sure he’d looked at them again after putting them in the box. But he’d still put them there.

The rest of the box’s contents were forgotten as Karen lay back, still clutching the papers, the image of her and Matt blurring through her tears. It wasn’t even these tokens he’d kept, not really. It was the certainty, now, that he would have cared, once he learned he was to be a grandfather (she didn’t care what Matt said, he would have been). In a world where he’d lived, she was pretty sure he would’ve even made efforts to keep in touch, to keep track, the way he’d never quite with her. Matt and Foggy might have argued she couldn’t be sure, not from this, but she’d *known* her father. He might have even tried to alter his behavior towards her as little as possible, but they still would have shared her child in common.

And even in this world, where he wouldn’t have lived to do any of that, he would have died much happier, had he known.

“I should have told him,” she wept, because that was another thing she now knew for sure. “I screwed it up one last time.”

A moment later it occurred to her that if Matt had happened to hear her say that, she’d probably be in for another lecture as to why she shouldn’t feel guilty over him, why he was the one who’d wronged her. The same one she’d gotten from him before. And from Foggy. And from Frank. And from Trish Walker.

And intellectually, Karen had to concede their points had been good. He had put a lot on her, and maybe been a little ungrateful over it. Especially when she’d still sent him checks over the years when she could, and even occasionally when she couldn’t, and there had been a handful of times he’d gotten desperate enough to cash them. And maybe doing what he’d done had been going a little too far. Frank had wondered out loud what might have happened if being kicked out and left alone had sent her into a downward spiral. “If you’d died,” he’d said, “that would’ve been on him.” Of course, he had reason to have strong feelings on the matter.

But the fact remained that she’d killed her brother, and that was still an act she could never expect forgiveness for, not from anyone. She was lucky everyone left alive who knew it had forgiven her anyway.

She must have fallen asleep, because the next thing she was aware of was someone settling onto the bed next to her, and when she opened her eyes, she saw it was Matt. He was already cleaned up and changed, and he was lowering his head to her abdomen with an awestruck expression.

It was pretty easy for her to guess why. “Can you hear…”

“…the heartbeat. It’s started.” He was nearly breathless. “It’s going so fast.”

“It’s supposed to,” Karen said stupidly. When Matt moved up to joyfully kiss her, she was happy enough to kiss back, still a little overwhelmed by the way he touched her now, with a new kind of reverence.

She’d still been holding both pieces of paper, and when she let go of them, Matt must have heard them waft down onto the blanket. And he’d probably heard the rustling of the other ones on the bed, because he asked, “Your father’s papers? What were on those?”

When she told him, trying to keep her voice neutral, he paused for a minute or so, a thoughtful frown on his face. “I don’t want any more words about how badly he behaved. Not now. I know he did. I don’t care. He was my father.”

“Then what should I say?” he asked. “Because I know this has to be causing you pain, and you’ve suffered enough as it is. Is there anything I can say or do to help? Any way to make you feel better?”

Her first response would’ve been no, she was sorry. But he looked so desperate, and Karen knew well there was nothing her husband hated more than feeling helpless, especially when someone he loved was suffering. So she tried to think, even as he started to press kisses to her cheeks and jaw, gentle, relatively chaste ones that even so left her tempted to just ask him to distract her.

But there was a weight in her chest she knew that wouldn’t get rid of, and he seemed to realize she needed a moment, because he stopped, and settled himself against her, a comforting unobtrusive warmth.

The thing was, he really couldn’t do anything about her father being dead. And yet grief and guilt wasn’t all that were plaguing her, she realized. There was also fear. She knew why that was, and it had been there from the moment Matt had told her he thought she was pregnant, but all this had made it far worse. A fear they both had for themselves, although Matt had outspokenly refused to share Karen's, insisting of course she'd be a good mother. It was a testament to how badly they both wanted this baby that they'd decided to have it anyway.

After thinking about that, she said, “We have to make sure we don’t mess this baby up, that it doesn’t go through what either of us went through. We’d never do what my dad did, of course, but if we can avoid making his earlier mistakes either, if we can learn from them, from what…from what Stick did to you…” She hoped Matt wouldn't object to her words there; there was always the chance.

But instead he said, “We both have to acknowledge that they were wrong, then. But I…I think maybe we’ve...we've finally both done that.”

He was right, and both the realization that he was right about her, and that he was telling the truth about himself, caused a knot in Karen to unravel. Once again tears sprung from her eyes, though there were only a few of them this time, and she moved to kiss him, clumsy in her passion until his hands on her head held her steady. Heat flared within her, even as the exhaustion from the night’s emotional journey set in, and she craved his touch, his arms around her, but she wasn’t sure she was up to this. She wasn’t even sure the attempt wouldn’t make her nauseous again.

Matt knew, of course. He always knew, and had gotten good at figuring out what she needed. Gently he tipped her and lay her back down on the bed, before whispering, “I’ll get the box off the bed-that was your mother’s, right?-and then, just let me take care of you tonight.”

He put it on the nightstand. and most of her piles of paper on the floor, making sure to keep them as she’d sorted them; they could be moved somewhere more appropriate in the morning. Then he was back with her, freeing them both of their clothes, kissing his way down her body, keeping it light on her overly tender breasts, lingering over her belly to hear that heartbeat again-and after all the times he went gauging her systems while they were trying to conceive this baby, he was an expert in seducing her from that position. A few strokes of his tongue downwards, and his hands around her thighs, so clever in opening her up, and she was wet and ready for him.

And he did take care of her. He keep his head down there for ages, pleasuring her until he’d rendered her spent and boneless, her spine still tingling. When he took her then, he wrapped her up in his embrace, making her feel warm and safe, contained in their own world, his kisses sweet and loving as he thrust good and deep inside her, the two of them groaning their pleasure into each other’s mouths. She basked in the heat of it, his skin and breath against her own, the trembling of his body against her when he finally fell apart in her arms.

When she emerged from the bathroom afterwards, Matt was already asleep. Even so, when she climbed into bed and pressed up against him, he wrapped an arm around her in his sleep, and made a very pleased noise when she burrowed in.

She let her hand stray to her abdomen, where there was still nothing she herself could hear or feel specifically. Although she’d started to feel generally off even before Matt had first detected what was happening, and the awareness had stayed, even outside the hormones and occasional nausea. She knew the embryo somewhere beneath her hand was a tiny thing, less than half an inch in length, she’d been told, and yet it was already such a large presence, here with its parents-to-be in their bed.

A memory popped into her head, then, from her mother’s Bible study, of Mrs. Dalton, who'd had four children, tittering over all the “begetting” that Matthew opened with, or at least the KJV version of it. The responses of some of the other women had made little Karen cringe; it was like they'd wanted everyone to feel embarrassed and ashamed because they'd let the topic of sex come up. They felt even more cringe-worthy now, just as the idea of them saying such things about her having begat a baby herself. Or was in the process of begetting? She wasn’t sure what the exact definition of the word even was. Of course, patriarchal thought would think the job done already, so probably it was the first.

But her mom’s response hadn’t been cringe-worthy at all. She’d simply said, “Take it as shorthand for having and raising their children both. After all, we’ve got a whole family line here, meaning everyone begat grew up too.” Karen still thought that was a very nice way of interpreting what otherwise came off as a random line of text that became more ridiculous when it was trying to have Jesus descended from all the people in the Old Testament, but did so through Joseph, who of course hadn’t been his actual father. Especially since Joseph had, after all, still raised him.

Her father had raised her, she thought, there in the dark. He’d turned away afterwards, but he’d still done that. He was that part of her coming child, and no more, along with her mother, and Matt’s father. And for that child’s sake, she had to let the rest of it go, not burden him or her with it. Accept that her old family was gone, and the mistakes that had destroyed it couldn’t be undone. All she could do now was make her new family, both by blood and by choice, and keep it as best she could.

She’d probably end up keeping her father’s printouts of the photo and the news article, though. It was silly of her, really, but the idea of throwing them out still felt too painful. When they put most of the papers with the rest of their legal documents, maybe those could stay in her mother’s box. And on that thought, Karen closed her eyes and fell asleep in her husband’s arms.

She started the next morning hunched over the toilet, with Matt holding her hair and rubbing her back, and actually telling her when he thought that was almost all of it and when it was over. She suspected he’d ultimately suffer from her morning sickness more than she did, because she at least had stopped smelling and tasting it by the time Foggy dropped in to check on them both and do some preliminary look overs of her father’s papers with them. She’d finished going through them by then, and there weren’t any more printouts of him tracking her life, but she hadn’t really expected any more.

Foggy also looked the printed photo, and said, “Honestly, I still wished you’d sent him the one with everyone in it, including Ellison. I know that’s spiteful of me.”

“I don’t think he ever even heard his name,” Karen noted. “He might have figured someone else gave me away, if he ever even thought about it.”

Strangely, saying the words didn’t hurt the way they always would have in the past.


End file.
